2011

This is a response to Rory Stewart's book excerpt, "My uphill battle against the Afghanistan intervention."

Rory Stewart maintains that it is "not simply difficult, but impossible" to build an Afghan state. Presumably, this is meant hyperbolically, since Afghanistan has been recognized as an independent state far longer than any of its northern or southern neighbors.

It is true that the Afghan state had almost no capacity a decade ago, after twenty years of civil war, and that it still struggles to deliver basic public services. Nevertheless, nothing in Stewart's pessimistic assessment would lead one to realize that since 2001 Afghanistan's licit GDP has risen by 300 percent, that tax collection as a percentage of GDP now exceeds that of Pakistan, that school attendance has risen eightfold, that the country's literacy rate will triple in 10 years if these children are permitted to stay in school, that 80 percent of the population has access to basic health care faculties (albeit often distant and intermittent), that child mortality has dropped by one third as a result, and that despite the ongoing conflict longevity is increasing. Yet another striking statistic is that today almost half of Afghan households have telephones.

Why don't incentives appear to be working in cases of teacher merit pay?

First, let's be clear that not all pay-for-performance (P4P) programs are the same. These programs differ greatly, from the choice of collective versus individual incentives, to the criteria by which incentives are awarded, to the inclusion of additional capacity-building elements, to the amount of the reward. Also, very few of these programs in the United States have been tested empirically. The research we've done at RAND and elsewhere in recent years has focused on programs incentivizing educator performance based primarily on the results from annual state tests of student performance. While limited, this research, along with theory, nevertheless suggests that several core factors may have contributed to the poor results found in recent P4P programs.

Following the death of Osama bin Laden, a growing chorus of skeptics has called for withdrawing U.S. forces from Afghanistan. Such an exit would be a mistake. It would risk the return of the Taliban, one of the most repressive regimes in the modern era, with ties to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

Without the support of U.S. troops, the Afghan government would likely collapse to Taliban forces, backed by neighboring Pakistan. A Taliban regime would make a mockery of human rights and allow terrorist groups to operate on its soil—exactly what happened in the five years the Taliban ruled Afghanistan before the 9/11 attacks. The U.S. should have learned that lesson.

The phrase "touch my junk" became part of the lexicon of air passenger security in late 2010, thanks to the controversial decision by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration to increase the physical scrutiny of air travelers.

John Tyner uttered the now-famous words in San Diego when he refused to walk through a whole body-image scanner and then refused to submit to a full body frisk. The latter would have involved a TSA agent touching his genitals.

Counterterrorism has been a central component of policing in the United Kingdom since Irish republicans carried out their first bomb attacks on British soil in 1881. But the attacks that unfolded an ocean away on September 11, 2001, prompted profound changes in British counterterrorism strategy and structure as authorities refocused on a new deadly and determined foe.

By 2001, the UK's history as both a target and a battleground for a variety of terrorist groups had led to the establishment of an integrated and well-rehearsed response mechanism involving the government, police and intelligence agencies.

Iran's new "Greens"?

The Iranian regime faces a threat even more daunting than the 2009 Green Movement protests: a disparate yet potentially powerful civil disobedience movement motivated not just by politics, but by environmental, economic, and social issues. From demonstrations over the drying up of Lake Orumieh in northwestern Iran to organized youth water fights in Tehran, the resilience and spontaneity of protests in Iran have recently been on full display. But these protests differ from the 2009 protests. They are not necessarily motivated by Iran's contentious factional politics, and they are not wedded to the agenda of Iran's Islamist reform movement. Rather, they are the outpouring of popular frustration with daily life in Iran.

This commentary appeared in The Washington Post on September 1, 2011.

We all remember where we were on Sept. 11, 2001, when al-Qaeda launched its horrific attacks on the United States. In the decade since, no number of commissions, books, films and reports has been able to end the misconceptions about what 9/11 meant, America's response to it and the nature of the ongoing threat. As the anniversary nears, let's tackle some of the most persistent myths.

1. Sept. 11 was unimaginable.

In 2002, the White House described 9/11 as "a new type of attack that had not been foreseen." An understandable response to being caught off guard, perhaps — but the fact is that the possibility of hijacked airliners crashing into buildings was neither unimaginable nor unimagined. The idea dates at least to 1972, when hijackers, during a protracted domestic incident, shot the co-pilot of a Southern Airways flight and threatened to crash the plane into the nuclear facility at Oak Ridge, Tenn.

From the failed attempt to blow up a passenger plane flying from Amsterdam to Detroit in 2009 to the unsuccessful attempt to bring down two cargo airliners flying to the United States in 2010, Americans need no reminder that — 10 years after 9/11 — terrorists remain obsessed with attacking airlines and airports.

To meet this threat, the United States is spending billions of dollars each year on airline security. In light of these dollars and in light of this continuing threat, it is fair to ask what the American people are getting for their money besides a pat down at the airport and a body scan before they board their flights. Has the U.S. investment in airline security worked? And are the benefits worth the costs? The answers depend on how one calculates the costs and benefits of airline security. Generally speaking, cost-benefit analysis of security measures works best in situations where there is a high volume of continuing crime, allowing analysts to implement new security measures and quickly discern their results. Cost-benefit analysis does not so easily apply to terrorist attacks, which are fortunately rare, but which also have potentially significant consequences that go beyond casualty and property loss.

This commentary appeared on Financial Times on August 31, 2011.

In his article "A realm dismal in its rituals of rigour" (Analysis, August 26), John Kay provides a useful critique of economic modelling.

A model is like a map. It provides a schematic representation of the path from point A to point B. If one follows a map, but finds an overnight storm has felled a tree that blocks the path, one just takes a detour until the path can be restored or lays a new road if the damage is irreparable.

Models are metaphors, and all of them fail in certain situations, but there is much to be learnt from why and how exactly they fail. The best of economists — and you can include the originators of the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium paradigm among them — readily see the fallen tree. It appears one cannot fault them for not foreseeing all the ways in which their paradigm could have run into trouble, just as one cannot fault the meteorologist for not seeing which particular tree would fall in a perfect storm, or the epidemiologist for not seeing the Aids virus would jump from monkeys to human beings.

Fortunately for the national capital region, Hurricane Irene and the East Coast earthquake proved to be relatively minor events, as far as disasters go. There was some damage, and there have been no reports of serious injuries or deaths in the Washington area from either event.

But before everyone breathes a sigh of relief and resumes their daily routines, it would be wise to reflect on how people responded to what were, at the end of the day, dress rehearsals for much bigger events. If we fail to do that, we will miss an invaluable opportunity to draw valuable lessons.